Equipment is well-known for conveying the coiled hot rolled strip, especially non-ferrous metal strips, in a cold rolling mill. Such known transportation equipment for these strip coils usually consists mostly of cranes or trackless floor level transportation gear, such as fork lift trucks, by which means the strip coils are carried from the hot rolling mill and then unloaded and stored in a coil storage area. From the coil storage area, the coils are individually brought to a cold rolling train by this same type of transportation means and are then cold rolled. After being recoiled and again formed into cold rolled strip coils, they are carried to another coil storage area for cooling. Depending on the dimensional requirements of the strip, the chemical composition of the rolled metal, the capacity of the rolling mill, etc., this procedure is repeated one or more times before the coil finally enters the annealing furnace and, after annealing, is transferred elsewhere for further processing such as coating. This known method of transportation (with intermediate coil storage at the nonferrous cold rolling mills) is disadvantageous, because of the large space required for the intermediate storage of the hot rolled coils and because of the necessity of assuring that each coil is accurately deposited. Furthermore, because several cold rolling mills might have to be supplied with stock from the intermediate coil storage, several cranes are required for the intermediate storage area. This results not only in additional investment for those cranes, but also creates confusion in the order of treatment of the coils, because those cranes have to work side-by-side. Also, such handling of the strip coils is extremely labor intensive, and even partial automation of the work procedure is not possible.
It is, therefore, an outstanding object of the present invention to avoid to a great extent the disadvantages of the above-described transport system, by making possible an ordered storage of the coils in an intermediate storage area requiring relatively little space, by providing a rational procedure for the necessary movement of the rolled stock in a rolling mill, and arranging the above-mentioned specified equipment in order substantially to reduce the previously-required crane work and to make possible a partial automation of the transportation procedure.